Wednesday, November 28, 2007

Author’s note: This is the first of a two-part series on Mary Vincent of Kingston, Ontario, who’s had more than one encounter with the unknown.

The paranormal seems to follow certain people. Are they blessed, cursed, or just unlucky? Mary Vincent of Kingston, Ontario, is one of these people … one of the unlucky, or one of the cursed.

Mary, at the time 17, was staying with her brother when she realized something in his house wasn’t right.

“I was sleeping in a loft-type bedroom,” she said. “I woke suddenly one night with the immediate knowledge I wasn’t alone.”

Sitting at the side of her bed, staring at her, was a man.

“He just sat very still and the darkness of the room wouldn’t allow me to see his face,” she said. “It seemed as if he had a hat on. I was totally terrified. I tried to move but found I couldn’t. I couldn’t even turn my head away.”

She lie in bed, trying to scream for help, but could only manage a whisper. Then, as quickly as she’d noticed the dark man, he was gone.

“I lay there scared and shaken,” she said.

The next morning, she didn’t talk about her encounter … nor the next day, or the next.

“I did not tell anybody about this for years,” she said. “I didn’t want to hear ‘you were dreaming’ when I knew I wasn’t.”

The dark man with a hat remains a mystery to Mary but she wonders if she somehow invited him into her life.

“As a young mother I started doing the Ouija board with a close friend,” she said. “The more time we spent on it the more depth the messages seemed to have.”

One message was from her friend Milly’s mother, who had recently died.

“She told us some personal stuff that we did not know about money left to an alienated brother,” she said. The entity told Mary’s friend not to fight the will, which, unbeknownst to Mary, Milly and her sister were planning to do.

Was the entity Milly’s mother? According to people well-versed in the Ouija board, no, the entity was demonic. But it was convincing … even down to spelling “mom,” “mum,” like Milly’s British mother would.

Then Mary’s Ouija board experiences escalated. A group at a military camp asked her and Milly to hold a Ouija session at the base.

“I knew some but not all of the people,” Mary said. “We explained to them this was just for fun and we were in no way psychics.”

After what Mary calls “fluff,” the Ouija became alive, the planchette forcing itself across the board.

“It finally spelled out a name I had never heard of,” Mary said. “When I asked if anyone recognized the name, a woman – a German wife of a Canadian soldier – said it was her sister’s name.”

Then Mary stared to feel “terrible.”

“I felt ill, panicky and dark,” she said. “There was no better word than ‘dark’ for my feelings. I told the woman that I wasn’t getting a specific message just a terrible feeling. I felt angry, confused and totally unstable. She told me her sister had committed suicide.”

This frightened Mary.

“I realized that I was getting too close to the spirit side and, in this case, it wasn’t a good feeling,” she said. “I have never sat at the Ouija board since.”

But she couldn’t stay away from the paranormal. Curious about automatic writing, she allowed something unseen to write with her hand.

“I twice tried automatic writing,” she said. “The first time, when the pen started to move I got scared, being alone, and threw the pen.”

But that didn’t stop her from attempting to contact the spirit world again.

“The second time I kept my head averted but let the pen write,” she said. “When I looked at it I saw various words that didn’t mean anything but in the last place it said ‘Mary Elizabeth, it’s Grandma Hogeboom.’”

The handwriting of the last five words wasn’t Mary’s.

“I took the paper to my mother and she pulled out an old card my grandmother had once sent her,” she said. “The handwriting was identical. Absolutely identical. My mother flipped out.”

Did Mary channel her grandmother, or did something evil write with her hand … something that would find its way into her dreams?

Next week: A field of dreams.

Copyright 2007 by Jason Offutt

Got a scary story? Ever played with a Ouija board, heard voices, seen a ghost, UFO or a creature you couldn’t identify? Let Jason know about it: Jason Offutt c/o The Examiner, 410 S. Liberty, Independence, Mo. 64050, or jasonoffutt@hotmail.com. Include your name, address and telephone number. Your story might make an upcoming installment of “From the Shadows.”

Jason’s book of ghost stories, “Haunted Missouri: A Ghostly Guide to Missouri’s Most Spirited Spots,” is here. Order online at: tsup.truman.edu, www.amazon.com, or visit Jason’s Web site at www.jasonoffutt.com.

Wednesday, November 21, 2007

The apartment in Leighton Buzzard, a town 40 miles north of London, was only two years old when Adam Patterson moved in. It was typical; bedroom, bathroom, kitchen/dining area and a living room spilling inside the front door.

But, as normal as it looks, there is something strange about the apartment.

“Upon my first day there, I noticed the carpet was all worn out in front of where the TV goes, but I didn't think too much of it, only that it was a little bit odd,” Adam said. “I also saw that a plug socket above the sink was hanging off. Again, I didn't think too much of it, but at first glance, I did question the reasons for this.”

Adam’s life in the apartment was “fine for the first few months.” But that has changed.

“Despite being very low about certain aspects of my life, in regards to the actual flat, I was pleased,” he said. “However, the past two months have been increasingly strange.”

Like the feeling of being watched every night. Then there are the lights and shadows.

“Strange lights appear whilst sitting on my couch in front of the TV, when I only had two small wall lights on, which are placed behind me at the kitchen area,” he said. “A couple of strange shadows would regularly appear and they would react to my movements when I decided to 'test' them.”

And, by testing, Adam meant touching.

For the past two months, Adam has kept the same schedule. He’s spent every Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday night, sitting in front of the TV waiting for the lights and shadows to appear.

“(I turn) the TV off with the remote control, and look in the TV's reflection if I can find the source of these shadows and lights,” he said. “I have always been convinced that what I am searching for is behind me at the kitchen area.”

For these two months, Adam has obsessively moved from the couch to the TV to gain a better view of the light and shadow reflections on the screen.

“Last week, I had an extremely interesting consideration dawn on me,” he said. “I suddenly realized that for two months now – several times each week – I have been in the middle of experiencing these strange lights and shadows, and ended up moving from my couch to sit in front of the TV in order to give a closer inspection to the screen's reflections.”

He thought, ‘I am probably going to start wearing out the carpet at this rate,’ when he realized the carpet between the couch and the television was already worn – probably by the previous occupant.

“This same night, I worked out that from the direction of light, together with the placement of each shadow, the source of the disturbance was most definitely coming from the kitchen wall,” he said. “‘Next door have found a way to look at me through the wall,’ I thought.”

He walked into the kitchen to try and find a gap where his next-door neighbor might be playing jokes on him, when he thought if he were doing the peeping, he’d unscrew the wall socket.

“Wow, another coincidence,” he said, the wall socket in the kitchen already hanging loose. “This has perhaps already been done by someone else.”

Was the apartment’s former tenet, he wondered, thinking and doing exactly what he was … and if so, why?

“Saturday night I stayed in to watch TV and during the entire night I was experiencing a very strong feeling of being watched,” he said. “The shadows on the wall were looking more and more like human heads, and they were once again reacting to my movements.”

Adam turned off the television and he saw a reflection on the television screen.

“Two slightly distorted human silhouettes were sitting on either side of me,” he said. “I also noticed my own silhouette was very unlike me; my head seemed a little larger than usual, and the reflection of my movements was often delayed or ahead of me.”

He started playing games with the reflections, watching them move as he motioned toward them. Then he noticed something even more unnerving – one of the shadows was nudging him closer to the other.

“For the entire evening, one of them was attempting to lure me into the other one,” he said. “I think it wanted to consume me somehow. I know this all sounds crazy, but ... I was in direct contact with two very real 'shadow people.’

Although Adam speculates the shadow people are from a different dimension, he doesn’t know this. He only knows what he feels.

“I don't think they are necessarily evil. I describe them as curious,” he said. “But it's absolutely horrible for me.”

Copyright 2007 by Jason Offutt

Got a scary story? Ever played with a Ouija board, heard voices, seen a ghost, UFO or a creature you couldn’t identify? Let Jason know about it: Jason Offutt c/o The Examiner, 410 S. Liberty, Independence, Mo. 64050, or jasonoffutt@hotmail.com. Include your name, address and telephone number. Your story might make an upcoming installment of “From the Shadows.”

Jason's book of ghost stories, “Haunted Missouri: A Ghostly Guide to Missouri's Most Spirited Spots,” is here. Order online at: tsup.truman.edu, www.amazon.com, or visit Jason’s Web site at www.jasonoffutt.com.

Wednesday, November 14, 2007

A cool October breeze brushed Len Berroth as he stood at his front door in 2006. Len, of DeLand, Fla., thought he was at the end of three mostly sleepless nights and a seven-hour drive.

But something wasn’t right at Len’s house.

“Sleep depravation lifted the veil between parallel plains that coexist at different vibration levels would be my guess,” Len said. “What showed itself was not of this world yet interacted with dwellings, objects, landscape surroundings as if it were theirs.”

The world around Len rippled, sending streaks of light dancing past him, as his perception of reality changed. For the next nine and a half hours, he watched his neighborhood team with life that shouldn’t be.

Like the giants.

“Three giant beings were visible, human-like … except in height. They ducked their heads to go under the wires on the telephone poles,” Len said. “The tops of their heads were even with the roof tops.”

The giants gently groomed bushes and trees as they made their way down the neighborhood.

“It looked like they were twining rope from the leaves and branches,” Len said.

His neighbors across the street were on vacation, but as Len stood at his door, two SUVs pulled in the neighbor’s drive and six “average-looking people” got out of the SUVs and spent several hours talking, never approaching the house.

“Positioning myself for a better look across the street I heard the sound of grass being ripped up behind me,” Len said. “Turning, I saw my two 15-foot high, elephant yard adornments grazing the front lawn. Their trunks yanked the grass up, feeding to their mouths while slowly walking around the yard.”

Tires sliding across pavement drew Len’s eyes back to the SUVs which, like the giants and the lawn ornaments, were alive.

“The two SUVs were acting like a pair of grazing buffalo,” Len said. “Their tires scraped at the driveway as their front ends dipped down till the bumpers touched the ground as if eating. I did go over the next day and have pictures showing erratic black rubber markings on the concrete consistent with what I saw.”

The “average-looking people” didn’t seem to notice the activity because they were interested in something else.

“I saw one person in their group holding what I’ll describe as box-like, four inches high, 14 inches deep, 18 inches wide, a series of different colored lights forming several rows,” he said.

The others circled around the man with the box as a sequence of colored lights turned on and off in a pattern. Len said the box was a signal light.

“The group now looked up to the night sky, then I saw hovering about 2,000 feet above us was a saucer-shaped craft completely silent, then it’s underbelly lit up as rows of colored lights flashed the same sequence toward the ground,” Len said. “Just then six beings appeared on the sidewalk in front of that house, they were in mid stride when they popped out of nowhere.”

The beings were eight-feet tall, slender and dressed in black, hooded robes.

“They seemed relevant to the space craft as the colored light exchange stopped,” Len said. Then the beings dressed in black disappeared as did the craft. “The craft shot from sight directly after the black robed beings disappeared.”

That wasn’t the end. Len later saw what he described as Neanderthals milling for hours in his yard until a friend of his pulled up to his house.

“Ten of them were in my front yard, taking no notice as a friend pulled up next to them,” he said. “These beings acted like we weren’t there as I met my friend at the curb, she couldn’t see them.

“Tell me you don’t see these people,” Len demanded of his friend. “‘Nobody’s there,’ was her response. The commotion from my raised voice caused the people that signaled the UFO to walk toward us.”

The people crossed the road and stopped several feet from Len and his friend.

“You know I can see you,” Len thought, and a voice in his head said “yes.”

Len grabbed his friend’s arm and ran into his house. A year later, Len is convinced his experience was not caused by sleep deprivation, but by our dimension merging with dimensions we don’t normally see.

“That night, trees and plants took active roles, exposing their living spirits as being more in tune to surroundings, quite capable of telepathic exchange,” he said. “But that’s another story in itself.”

Copyright 2007 by Jason Offutt

Got a scary story? Ever played with a Ouija board, heard voices, seen a ghost, UFO or a creature you couldn’t identify? Let Jason know about it: Jason Offutt c/o The Examiner, 410 S. Liberty, Independence, Mo. 64050, or jasonoffutt@hotmail.com. Include your name, address and telephone number. Your story might make an upcoming installment of “From the Shadows.”

Jason's book of ghost stories, “Haunted Missouri: A Ghostly Guide to Missouri's Most Spirited Spots,” is here. Order online at: tsup.truman.edu, www.amazon.com, or visit Jason’s Web site at www.jasonoffutt.com.

Wednesday, November 07, 2007

Lindsie Harlan of Austin, Texas, often wrestles with sleep. One night in the spring of her senior year in high school, the math education major at Austin Community College, awoke to find something dark, something cloaked in shadows.

“I was asleep and I just woke up for no reason and there was this huge tall black figure standing on the side of my bed,” Lindsie said. “Its legs were all the way to the ceiling and it was staring down at me with two beady, shiny eyes.”

Lindsie lie in bed, the hooded figure staring down at her.

“I didn’t move because I was afraid if I moved it would know I was alive and try to kill me,” she said. “I felt as if I was paralyzed from the eyes down.”

As many people experiencing ghosts and shadow beings have reported, Lindsie was able to shut her eyes and strangely fall back to sleep. She didn’t talk to anyone about the experience until her second paranormal encounter later that summer – a night wrapped in cold.

“Before I fell asleep that night I ended up going into the laundry room and getting another comforter because I was freezing,” she said.

Lindsie woke in the early morning hours to find another visitor in her room, a swirling, smoky cloud that slowly coalesced into the head of a lion.

“I woke up and I looked toward my door,” she said. “I didn’t even realize I was looking at anything until I saw these huge eyes staring at me. It was this swirling vortex of a cloud with two huge eyes. It had a mouth – and it was open. It looked more like a human mouth on a lion head with huge eyes. I was afraid, terrified.”

“I turned on my lamp and could actually see my chest move from my heart pounding,” she said. “It was beating fast for maybe 30 minutes. I couldn’t calm down. I panicked. I felt nothing but evil coming off of that thing.”

The next day she reluctantly told her mother the story.

“She got scared for me,” Lindsie said. “She started going into this whole thing about Jesus and to say ‘in the name of Jesus, I command you to go away.’ She also said something about ‘death comes knocking on peoples door all the time, you just have to be careful.

“Do you really think it’s death?”

Lindsie found her mother spoke from experience. Her mother confessed that, as a child she experienced something dark and sinister knocking at her door.

“When she was younger, she shared a room with her sister, and while she was laying in her bed she kept hearing this noise coming from the living room like footsteps,” Lindsie said.

The footsteps moved through the living room and kitchen before marching down the hallway to her bedroom door.

“As these footsteps grew louder she said that she could barely breathe,” Lindsie said. “And it started to get really cold and she had become really scared for her and her sister.”

Lindsie’s mother began praying aloud as the footsteps came closer and a shadow appeared under the closed bedroom door like someone was standing right outside.

“Right as the footsteps got up to her door she saw the knob turn and right as she said, ‘protect me lord,’ the shadow disappeared,” Lindsie said. “The knob quit trying to turn to open the door.”

Lindsie hasn’t been visited in the night since the cold, dark lion, but that doesn’t leave her comforted. She’s still waiting for the night something dark with glaring eyes wakes her in the darkness.

“I find it hard to go to sleep,” she said. “I am so paranoid that the next time I open my eyes I’m going to see something else that will scare me.”

Copyright 2007 by Jason Offutt

Got a scary story? Ever played with a Ouija board, heard voices, seen a ghost, UFO or a creature you couldn’t identify? Let Jason know about it: Jason Offutt c/o The Examiner, 410 S. Liberty, Independence, Mo. 64050, or jasonoffutt@hotmail.com. Include your name, address and telephone number. Your story might make an upcoming installment of “From the Shadows.”

Jason’s book of ghost stories, “Haunted Missouri: A Ghostly Guide to Missouri’s Most Spirited Spots,” is here. Order online at: tsup.truman.edu, www.amazon.com, or visit Jason’s Web site at www.jasonoffutt.com.

About Me

Jason Offutt is a syndicated columnist, author, college journalism instructor, and fan of all things strange. His books include the novel, "A Funeral Story," the parody survival book, "How to Kill Monsters Using Common Household Items," the humorous travelogue, "Across a Corn-Swept Land," and four books about the paranormal, "Paranormal Missouri: Show Me Your Monsters," "What Lurks Beyond: The Paranormal In Your Backyard," "Darkness Walks: The Shadow People Among Us," and “Haunted Missouri: A Ghostly Guide to Missouri's Most Spirited Spots.” All are available at www.amazon.com.
Jason is available for interviews, speaking engagements and beer festivals. E-mail all serious inquiries to: sjasonoffutt@gmail.com.